Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 March 1944
Farmers Urged to Produce Charcoal for Victory
With fuel supplies needed for the war effort, all farmers are being urged to turn wood into charcoal. The only equipment needed is a large pit and …
FAIRHILLS STATION, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA, 20 MARCH 1944
KIRSTY
She wasn’t going to knit. Or join a RAAF typing pool.
Kirsty McAlpine rubbed the sweat from her forehead, narrowly avoiding knocking an eye out with the pliers she still had in her hand. Clouds piled up on the horizon; clouds that refused to rain, as though they were waiting for someone to say, ‘The wet season hasn’t finished. Time to rain!’ and fire a starting pistol. She eyed a buzzard, lazily circling her, and made a face. ‘Buzz off,’ she told it. ‘And no need to be so smug. I can outfly you any day.’
Except she couldn’t. The Swaggie sat in the Fairhills shed, with the last of the cans of gas. This was as far as she’d got, back from Europe after winning the Zurich to Milan air race, and in record time too. She’d barn-stormed her way back, stopping wherever there was a chance to buy gas and a flat place big enough to land — which for the Swaggie was an incredible hundred and fifty-four feet, the shortest runway required by any competitor. She was light too, just over a thousand pounds, eighty-horsepower motor, two-blade tractor propeller, maximum speed ninety-six miles per hour, or better with a tail wind, stall speed a fabulous thirty-four miles per hour — she could balance her craft in a breeze and she would stay up like a cloud. Plywood skin, wooden frame, steel twine struts braced with piano wire. Best of all, she was light on fuel: one tank would take her a thousand miles, depending on wind and altitude and weight carried, which in her case was eight stone twelve pounds, measured exactly so she’d know whether she could get over the Alps in safety.
She’d been flying solo by then. Johnno had wanted to get married after the Dover to Paris race. But marriage meant children, cooking dinner, sitting at home while your husband challenged the eagles. And no matter how much Johnno protested, that’s what’d happen, just as it had to Flinty back at Rock Farm.
Not that Flinty minded. Rock Farm and her family were her life, interspersed with the novels that brought in enough to keep the family prosperous and, if Kirsty was honest, keep her in the air, because the prize money from the air races only went so far, and that wasn’t to Dover or even the Giro Aereo D’Italia.
Flinty was a good sort; hadn’t kicked up a ruckus when she’d learnt that Kirsty had been flying, not studying Arts like a good girl at Sydney Uni.
If she’d known that the RAAF was going to put its collective head in the sand like an ostrich, she’d have stayed in Britain. At least there women could fly aircraft from the factory to the bases, even fly cargo, although they weren’t allowed on combat missions. But here — ha! All the RAAF wanted its women members to do was type. Or chauffeur officers in cars. Let anyone with a bosom get within sneezing distance of an aircraft and the RAAF had pink kittens.
She could fly rings around them. And under and over them too, like she’d flown under the Sydney Harbour Bridge that longago night for a dare. But no matter how many air miles, or wins, or air-mile lines across the world map she could show them, flying was lost to her for the duration.
Sometimes she felt that she’d rather lose her arms than her wings.
She’d landed here two months after war with Germany had been declared. Gas was already in short supply and going to Rock Farm, even if she’d been able to find the fuel, seemed suddenly less attractive. She’d be back to being younger sister Kirsty, peeling potatoes, planting potatoes, knitting socks on the veranda with Flinty …
No, she was not going to knit.
So she knocked on the homestead door and got a job. They were easy enough to come by, what with all the station hands galloping off to Darwin to sign up. There were worse places to spend the war than this. Admittedly the heat struck you like a fist at seven am, and if she had to stare at one more steer’s backside she’d scream. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were a tough steak with an egg on top if you were lucky, and boiled greens that she’d been careful not to ask Cookie to identify. But she could do the work with one hand tied behind her back. All right, not without both hands, not fencing, mile after mile of it; nor building stockyards for the yearly muster or shelters for the bulls so the bally animals didn’t get sunburnt. Crikey, if only they’d farm roos in this country instead of bally cattle …
Even Greta was tired on the way back to the homestead. Kirsty brushed the flies from her eyes as they turned the last bend in the track. The heat built up each day, not so much hotter as heavier, as if eventually the air might crush you to the ground. No wonder the poor southern bulls needed shelter.
A jeep sat in the sun by the veranda. All at once the weariness left her. Johnno! She urged Greta to a reproachful canter around the back, unsaddled her and watered her, then let her into the house paddock. She climbed the kitchen steps. But the kitchen was empty. ‘Cooee! Where are you all?’
‘In here.’ It was Marg’s voice.
Kirsty pulled off her boots and padded down the corridor. ‘What do you want to take this great mug into the living room for? Kitchen’s good enough for him.’ She lifted her cheek for a kiss.
Johnno smelt of salt and wilted starch from his uniform. He was tall, but skinny as a post-and-rail fence, which had been good in his flying days — less weight meant less fuel and more speed.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were getting leave, you great galoot? We’d have killed the fatted calf. Or at least shoved another buzzard in the stew. How can they manage the war without you?’
‘Left instructions. Can’t stay — I have to drive back tonight.’
‘What? You won’t get back till the small hours. Probably get lost on the way.’
‘Nah. Keep my back to the sunset and follow the searchlights to the base.’
Sudden panic hit her. ‘You’ve heard something about Joey?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ His voice was gentle.
‘There’s nothing wrong at home? Flinty?’
‘Keep your hair on, darling. It’s nothing like that. This is work, not family.’
She smiled in relief. ‘Just as long as you remember I’m not your darling.’ And not for want of trying, she thought. He’d kissed her once, after that win in Milan. Well, all right, she had kissed him too. The kiss had shaken her like a hundred-mile-an-hour headwind. She’d been careful not to repeat the experience. Too many kisses like that and who knew where she’d find herself? Or rather, she knew too well, and each scenario led to her marching up the aisle. Except ladies didn’t march. She wouldn’t even be allowed to wear boots under her wedding dress …
Marg stood — tall, sun-streaked hair and skin toughened by three decades at Fairhills, managing it with her husband after her parents died and now with Kirsty since he’d joined up, though ‘managing’ a property up here meant both less and more than it did down south. There were few fences, except around the house, sheds and yards, and you had to bring in a new bull or six every few years and cull the older ones. The real work was rounding them up over a thousand square miles, then droving them to Darwin. ‘I’ll get fresh tea. Johnno has something he needs to tell you.’
‘Yeah, he’s been trying to tell me that for five years.’ She looked at him with affection. ‘And I’m not buying it.’
‘I think you need to hear this,’ said Marg quietly. She left to get the tea, which would not be a fresh brew, but this week’s ration stewed for the fifth time, last week’s bread, no butter, tough meat sliced thin enough to chew it.
Kirsty sat down, and put her feet on the table. ‘I’m done in. All right for you in your nice office with your fan.’ Ten years of flying and the RAAF had stuck Johnno in a Darwin office, which was the RAAF all over, just because he had a heart murmur. Couldn’t send a man out to die unless he’s a hundred per cent fit.
But she was glad. Glad that Johnno was safe, or as safe as you could be with Jap bombers overhead, even though their raids on Darwin and Broome barely made the newspapers. Glad, in a way, that she needn’t be jealous of him, up in the sky while she was stuck here, looking at cattle bums.
‘Wish I’d never told you about that fan.’ Johnno looked at her steadily.
‘All right, what is this you need to say to me?’
‘Can you keep it quiet? I’d probably be court-martialled if anyone knew I’d told you this.’
‘Who am I likely to tell? The goannas?’ She looked at him more closely. ‘You’re absolutely serious about this, aren’t you?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve never really told you what my work is.’
‘Paper shuffling,’ she quoted promptly.
‘It’s what’s on the paper that matters. I … coordinate reports, from all across the Top End. Some from the north too.’
‘Papua? New Guinea?’
He didn’t answer. ‘Ham-radio operators mostly. They can warn us that Jap planes are coming in. Some are up on mountains with good visibility to look out for ships. And sometimes … other things.’
She nodded, aware that there was much he wasn’t telling her, and she was careful not to ask for more. Was the real reason he was at a desk not a heart murmur? Perhaps there wasn’t anything wrong with his heart at all, but he’d been chosen because he’d flown over this country, knew it from the air in the way it would take someone a lifetime to know it from the ground. He had dropped in — sometimes almost literally — on villages all over Papua, New Guinea and northern Australia.
‘You want us to watch here?’ She shrugged. ‘If we ever see a Jap, I’ll let you know.’
‘No. That’s not why I came. Kirsty, a report came in yesterday. And this is the top-secret part, because if word got out we were even getting a message from this area, it might mean the death of the bloke who sent it.’
She took her feet off the table, nodded. ‘I’m listening.’
‘He’s a padre. Church of England. Good bloke. When the Japs invaded Papua most of the Anglican missionaries chose to stay with their flocks. They said that their church expected it, that Jesus would have expected it, that their own consciences said they must do it — not abandon the members of their church as the enemy approached. So they stayed.’
The simple story touched her so much it was hard to ask, ‘Are they still alive?’
‘Some of them. Had to leave their churches, of course. Go into the jungle. Their mission people, those they’d converted to Christianity, protected them, mostly at any rate. Others went over to the Japanese. When that happened …’ He shrugged. ‘Well, the missionaries didn’t live long after that. Sometimes it was a native axe. Sometimes the head was brought to the Japanese for the reward. But the bloke I’m telling you about, he’s still there.’
‘And he’s one of your watchers.’
He nodded. ‘He says there’s nothing in the Bible against sending information to those who can do good with it. He’s got a radio. He’s given us some good stuff. But yesterday …’ He searched for words. ‘Reception’s bad most of the time. He can’t say much either — the longer he broadcasts, the more likely it is that the Japs will pick up his signal and work out where it’s coming from. He has to keep moving. So all I can tell you is what he told us yesterday. “Mrs Overflow shot last Wednesday.”’
She sat frozen on the couch. Nancy of the Overflow, the laughing girl of so many Christmas picnics. Missing for two years, presumed dead, but only because her body hadn’t been picked up from the sea.
What if she’d survived? Not just survived, but managed to get to Papua?
It wasn’t impossible. Neither she nor Nancy’s family had been told where the ship had been when it went down. Maybe it had been closer to Papua than Singapore. If men could escape after the fall of Singapore, wangle their way onto boats to get across the Straits and bush-bash their way across country, then Nancy could do it too. Of all the people who might be able to get to Papua, she’d put the girl she knew towards the top.
‘Mrs Overflow?’
‘It might have been “Miss”. As I said, the reception wasn’t good.’
‘Not Nancy?’
‘No. Just what I told you. Nothing but that. But we don’t have any record of a woman called Mrs Overflow in the area.’
And Nancy, she realised, shot, delirious perhaps, might well have whispered, ‘Nancy of the Overflow,’ instead of her real name.
‘Where is she? Yes,’ she added impatiently, ‘I will keep it secret. And if you’re not going to tell me, why do you have a map in your hip pocket?’
He drew it out, spread it on the table. ‘There.’
About a hundred miles from the coast. High country. She had a memory of dark green mountain ranges, a sea of trees below her, cliffs that reared nearly vertically from river valleys below, mountainsides swimming in clouds as thick as snow and just as deadly, ready to sink on you in swirling clouds that were blindingly thick one moment and vanished the next.
‘You have to get her out. Where are the Allied forces now?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Can’t, or won’t?’
‘Won’t. But I can tell you there are none of our forces near enough to get there. And even if they could,’ he looked at her again, ‘it would take weeks to get her out of there on foot.’
‘Not worth it. She’d be dead,’ said Kirsty flatly.
‘You can’t redirect the war for one girl,’ he said softly.
‘No. Johnno, I’m sorry. Of course you can’t. You or anybody else.’ She sat back. ‘Why did you tell me?’
‘You told me about the Overflow girl, how much she means to everyone …’
‘I don’t mean that.’ She fought down what might have been tears, a blooming great lump in her throat. That poor girl, a stranger in strange hands, dying, so far from home. ‘If there’s no way to help her, why tell me? I can’t tell her family this. That she might possibly be alive, possibly somewhere deep in Papua but possibly dying too, and there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Nothing I can do. Nor the army or the RAAF.’
The way he said it implied that someone else might. ‘I don’t understand.’
He took a deep breath. ‘We need to get someone up there. Someone who knows the country, someone who’s younger than the bloke who’s there now. Someone to report on … well, that doesn’t matter. Or rather it does matter, but it’s on a need-toknow basis. If someone were to fly up there — unofficially — carrying a passenger, then bring one back but not necessarily the same person … Well, unofficially — totally unofficially and we’d deny it if you had to land or were captured, if anyone heard about it at all. But strictly hypothetically, we could make sure that no one from our side at least intercepted you. The bloke you’d be taking up there could tell you where to go. We could give you weather forecasts, though you know as well as I do how much they’re worth — conditions up there can change in minutes.’
‘You’d help me to fly up there?’
‘Yes. Get you whatever fuel you need. I can even help you check Swaggie over.’
And he was a damn good bush mechanic too. As good as she was. ‘Because you need someone dropped off?’
‘And to rescue a girl — or a woman, if it isn’t the girl you know. Yes.’ He met her eyes. ‘You wanted to fly, my dear. I’m giving you back your wings.’
‘Unofficially?’
‘Totally unofficially. You need to understand that if you’re taken, we can’t protect you. Can’t even acknowledge you. You might be shot for a spy. You might be shot for no reason other than that you are white and you are there. You might be met by a pack of blokes waiting to hand you in for a reward, or just hand in your head.’
‘Why don’t you take this bloke in yourselves?’
‘We could try to parachute him in, but that’d be like sending a great white flag saying, “Look over here,” to every enemy within a hundred miles. Our craft are too big to land up there anyway. There’s about fifty-two yards of jungle clearing. The only craft I know can do that is yours. It needs someone who can fly close to the tree line, in the edge of the clouds if she can.’
Flying in cloud in country like that meant risking a mountain meeting you head on. And Johnno knew it.
‘You make it sound so tempting.’
He grinned. ‘That’s my girl.’
‘Not yours, and not a girl.’
‘Yes. Well. One day we need to talk about that.’
‘Nothing to talk about. Can you really see me as a dear little wifey in an apron?’
He smiled. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that if I wanted a dear little wifey in an apron, I wouldn’t want you? Have I ever given you an apron? Or a bunch of roses?’
‘The only thing you’ve ever given me was an adjustable shifting spanner that time in Turkey, and even then you wanted it back.’
‘Not true. I’ve given you something else now — a chance to risk your neck.’
She looked at him. It was a strange way to say, ‘I love you.’ More, perhaps, a way to say, ‘I know you, I accept you, and love you enough to let you risk your life.’
Women were expected to wave goodbye with brave smiles when men risked their lives for their country. But a man who’d not just let his wife go into danger, but offer her the way …
‘Come to dinner when I get back,’ she said suddenly. ‘A nice tough steak and boiled pumpkin greens. We can talk about it then. Can you wangle a few days’ leave?’
‘If you can pull this off, I reckon they’ll owe me a few days’ leave.’ All joking had left his eyes now. ‘You’ll do it?’
‘What, fly your mission or marry you?’
‘Either. Or both.’
‘I’ll fly your mission,’ she said slowly. ‘And then we’ll talk about marriage. Really talk. I mean it.’
‘Can’t we talk about it now? We could start up a transport company, you and me after the war. Fly freight across Australia. No aprons involved, or not on you.’
She liked the sound of it. They might even make a go of it, both the company and the marriage. ‘In a hurry, aren’t you?’
‘This is war, my love,’ he said lightly. ‘You might not come back. Or I might not, if the Japs have better aim tonight.’ There was no laughter in his eyes at all now. ‘Give me a few hours at least when I can dream.’
‘All right.’
He stared at her. ‘You mean you will?’
‘I said all right.’
‘That has to be the most unromantic response in the history of marriage proposals.’
‘If you wanted romance, you should have gone down on one knee. And brought me the roses.’
‘Would you have said yes if I’d gone down on one knee?’
‘Probably not. But I wouldn’t mind the roses.’
‘Roses are a bit in short supply up here.’
‘Fair enough. But I’m warning you: you bring one apron into this marriage and you’ll be the one wearing it.’
‘You can give me one for a wedding present. You … you won’t change your mind?’
‘No.’ Ten minutes ago she had liked him, more than liked him, known he was her best friend, a mate. And now … Could you fall in love in ten minutes, all because he’d given you back your wings?
No. But you could because you had found out how deeply he understood you needed them. And she’d always known if she’d ever said yes to Johnno, there’d be no going back. Twenty thousand feet and a hundred-mile-an-hour wind behind her, gusting a bit, but true.
‘Kiss me, you fool,’ she quoted.
‘Kissing’s allowed now?’
‘I reckon so. You can even say you love me, if you like.’
‘I love you.’
‘Love you too.’
They grinned at each other foolishly. He bent towards her.
‘Tea,’ said Marg, plonking down the tray. She looked at Kirsty, then at Johnno. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’
Johnno drove the boy to Fairhills before the dawn — for he was still more boy than man, at twenty years old at most, with a pimple on his chin and round shoulders, not the warrior she’d been expecting.
All the better, she thought. More weight meant more fuel used. And they’d need to conserve all the fuel that they could in case there was a storm and she needed to detour, or if the map was wrong and the mountains were higher than expected so they had to go around, or they had to fly into a headwind — that used up fuel like a steer gulping water on a hot day.
Johnno swept his long legs out of the jeep, and kissed her, not a romantic kiss so much as a ‘Hello, world, this is the woman I am going to marry’ kiss. She accepted the declaration, enjoyed the kiss.
‘This is Brownie. Brownie, this is my fiancée, Kirsty McAlpine.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Miss McAlpine.’
‘Call me Kirsty.’ The boy wore khaki trousers, a khaki shirt, and carried a kit bag not much bigger than a lunch box over one shoulder, a Tommy gun and a knife shoved in his belt and a rifle over the other shoulder. He didn’t look like he could use any of it.
Was Brownie his real name? Or a nickname in case they crash-landed and survived, or she was captured but he escaped — so she couldn’t tell the enemy what she didn’t know?
‘All ready to go?’ Johnno asked.
She nodded. They’d been over Swaggie a dozen times. They’d even taken her for a test flight about the property, scaring the steers so they ran towards the river. Might be a good way to round up stock after the war, she’d thought. Much quicker and more fun than in the saddle.
‘I brought you something.’ He reached into the glovebox and handed her a rose.
It was just a bud, short-stemmed and very slightly wilted. But she could smell its scent when she lifted it to her nose. ‘Where the heck did you get this?’
He grinned, proud of himself. Worried too: she could see that in his eyes. ‘Mate flew up from Brizzie yesterday. I put in a special order.’
She stood on tiptoes and kissed him again, swiftly, because the boy was looking, because there wasn’t much time, not if she was going to get there and back in daylight — the only lit landing strip was at the base and she had a feeling they would not be happy if she tried to use it.
‘I’d offer you a cup of tea. But we’d better make the most of the daylight.’
She put the rose in the top buttonhole of her jacket, hoping the wind would be kind to it, and led Johnno and the boy behind the shed. If the boy was shocked by the tiny, tinny-looking craft, he didn’t show it. ‘Do I sit in the front, or back?’
‘Front. It has twin controls, but you won’t need to use yours.’ Unless they shoot me, she thought. But I don’t have time to show you how to bring the plane down yourself if that happens. ‘I won’t be able to hear you, so you’ll need to signal where to go. Like motorcar signals. Hand up to stop. Right hand out to go right, left to go left. Down for down.’
‘And up for up?’
‘I’ll know about the up bit. She’s a tougher craft than she looks,’ she added.
He nodded, either because he accepted her word or because there was no choice but to accept it.
He’s accepted death is a possibility too, she thought. For surely he must know he had little chance of surviving this expedition if any tiny thing went wrong. He might send signals for weeks, or months perhaps. But one day, unless the Allies pushed the Japanese out soon, they’d track down those signals and find him. She supposed once you had accepted that, then death in a small plane was a minor thing, a nuisance that meant you could not complete your mission — or even begin it. Though death was the final arbiter of every mission, in the end.
He said, ‘I hope we find your friend.’
‘Thank you. I hope … I hope your mission goes well.’
He smiled at that. ‘Dad was an actual missionary. He wanted me to be one too. Seems right to hear you call it a mission now.’
‘Was?’
‘He died.’
‘I’m so sorry. When?’
‘Don’t know. We don’t really know he’s dead, for that matter. But he stopped transmitting more than a year ago.’
One of the ones who stayed, Kirsty realised. ‘You must be proud of him. Australia would be proud of him, if they knew … if they were allowed to know.’
‘He did the right thing,’ said the young man who called himself Brownie. ‘That’s what would matter to him.’
‘We’d better get going.’ She showed him how to get up, to strap himself in, and helped him with his helmet.
‘Good luck,’ said Johnno quietly. ‘Come back safely.’ He hesitated. ‘Haven’t even got you an engagement ring yet. Or don’t you want one?’
‘You’re not getting out of it that cheaply, mister. I want a sapphire. Might even wear a dress when you put it on me too.’
‘A sapphire it is then. And I’ll be waiting for that dress.’
She’d loved dresses once, in the days before she’d had to prove herself ten times better than a man to be allowed to fly at all. She realised that after doing something this insane she could wear all the pretty dresses she liked and no one would question her qualifications.
She had a feeling that Johnno might like that too.
She fastened her own helmet, tied a scarf around her neck and secured it safely, belted herself in. Normally she’d have turned the propeller herself, but this time Johnno did it for her. Nothing happened. The engine caught the second time.
Johnno gave her the thumbs up. She returned the gesture, then blew him a kiss. Swaggie ran lightly across the stony ground, then leapt towards the sky.
We are beating the sun up, she thought, the old excitement thudding in her. Up into the greyness, the horizon not even flushed with the coming dawn. Feeling the cold bite of air, the taste of warm air currents where the eagles flew.
This is my world, she thought. Not with eagle wings, but with an engine beating like my heart.
The day lightened about them as they flew. She had forgotten the sheer speed of flight. It was green below them, the dry land still soaking up wet, and then the sudden shock of blue. Rich blue sea here in the north, sea that almost glowed, edged with green, the too-white sand.
Islands, white-fringed, rock-fingered, grey-brown or green; more sand, then more sea …
Cold air. Fresh air, no smell of steers or hot grass. It was so good to have cold air in her lungs again. I am a mountain girl, she thought. No: I belong to the sky.
She glanced at the compass, but was reasonably sure still where they were, where they were meant to be. Yes, there was the promontory just like on the map. There was the wide beach like a smile. A hill, shaggy with grass, the sea again. And then the land. Sand and grass then jungle, rising swiftly, looking more black than green.
And no one had shot at them yet, neither enemy nor ally. Johnno had been as good as his words. This route was as safe as it was possible to make it.
She kept low, skimming the trees, then turned towards the east, drove at the sun, half blind, her goggles half shielding her from the glare. And there was the mountain range.
My word, she thought, that’s not a mountain, it’s a wall. What her mind had known her imagination hadn’t seen. It was like a green wall that just went up and up, vanishing into white so it might keep rising up forever.
A hand came out in front of her, pointing left. And, yes, there was the gap, like a pulled tooth, cliffs among the green. She flew under the cloud, then into it, flying almost blind, visibility measured in yards, at most, as slow as she could make it. A second the fraction in the wrong direction could kill them now.
She hoped he didn’t know it.
The mist thickened. For a moment she thought they’d have to pull out of the cloud, go back, and then, miraculously, it lifted, like a hand had picked up a tablecloth or twitched aside a curtain. She had only a second to correct their flight: she shot away from a waterfall, a thin trickle down the rock, wondered if it was indeed a miracle, if the man in front of her had prayed, because if the fog hadn’t lifted they would be scattered in wreckage at the bottom of the cliff by now, brief flames among the green.
The chasm curved; she swerved with it.
Then they were out. Another slope to their left again. He pointed right, then suddenly his hand went up in a ‘stop’ sign. He pointed down.
She saw it. A pale green slash among the darker green, with what looked like bananas at the far end. The strip was as long as a cricket pitch perhaps.
There was a difference, she realised, between landing in fifty-two yards on a wide oval, and having only fifty-two yards to land in before you crashed into trees or a cliff. But if she could do the one, she could do the other.
And take off again. She hoped.
Down. Down. I am a bird, she thought. I am the heron, I am the eagle, I am the seagull landing on the soft green sea. The plane bumped once, almost clipping the bananas, rolled then stopped.
The clearing was empty.
Had they come to the right place?
She lifted her helmet off. The air hit her like a fist, humid and cold at the same time. She climbed stiffly out onto the wing and jumped down. He followed her, shivering. I should have warned him to put on three pairs of thermals, she thought. ‘What now?’
‘They’ll have seen us if they’re still here. We wait.’
Kirsty wondered who else might have seen them. There had been no sign of humanity below them. But there must be villages in under the canopy; could be the entire Japanese Army, for all she knew, invisible beneath the thick cover of trees.
She’d give her right-hand propeller for a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. Well, maybe not a propeller, given the circumstances, but her sugar ration for the next month.
Something moved in the shadows of the trees. Two men emerged. One was dark-skinned, and bare-chested despite the cold, with a pair of ragged shorts and frizzy black hair. He supported another man, one leg wrapped in bloody rags, the other smudged with blood and mud under a pair of shorts as ragged as his companion’s. His skin had once been white. Now his face was clay; clay-daubed, deliberately she thought, not the kind of dirt from sliding down a mountain.
The black-skinned man said something softly. The other nodded. The black-skinned man slipped back into the shadows of the trees.
The other limped forwards. He was dressed in what had been army uniform, though what he mostly wore was mud. Under the clay his face had the pallor of pain, illness and exhaustion. ‘Adam Ansover?’ The voice was breathless too.
‘Brownie’ glanced at Kirsty, shrugged. ‘That’s me. I’m supposed to meet the Reverend McPherson.’
‘I’m sorry. We haven’t had a chance to call in. He died three days ago. No, not the Japs. Malaria, I think. His boys buried him. Marked the grave too. You’ve got the radio?’
Brownie — Adam Ansover — tapped his swag.
‘Good. The reverend’s is on its last legs. The boys are waiting for you. There’s a cave —’ He stopped as Brownie indicated Kirsty. The man blinked. ‘You’re a woman.’
‘Last time I looked,’ said Kirsty.
‘I didn’t know a woman could fly.’ His voice was strangely flat, all emotion worn away.
‘You and the entire air force or most of it.’ She knew the near miracle of flying she’d done today. Not just the luck of the fog lifting when it had, but matching the plane with the wind, manoeuvring among the clouds. She hoped she didn’t spoil her good impression by crashing on the way back.
She glanced up at the sun, automatically checking the time by that, rather than her watch. You could forget to reset a watch as you crossed time zones, but the sun never let you down. ‘I need to get back. Where’s Miss Overflow? How is she? The message said she’d been shot.’
He stared at her, almost too tired to take her words in. He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. When I said “shot” I meant she’d been killed. They threw her body in the water.’ Still no emotion in that tired voice. ‘Her husband died two nights later. Grief as well as illness, I expect.’
‘Her husband? Nancy is — was — is — seventeen. No, eighteen.’
‘You must be thinking of someone else. Mrs Overflow is … was in her forties. Good woman.’ Again, the flat voice. ‘She was Reverend McPherson’s sister. Most of the wives evacuated back in ’41. She stayed put, and her husband too. Think that was how they could transmit for so long. Lots of folk respected them for that, staying with their flock.’
‘I … see.’ She felt curiously empty. All this for nothing. But she had known it was a long shot at best, hoping that a girl could find her way from island to island, evading capture both by the enemy and local men. And yet it had not been for nothing. For who knew what Brownie would report back, how many lives would be saved with the information he’d transmit.
She was glad she hadn’t told anyone at home about this, raised hopes that would now be flattened. The man swayed, his fists clenching as though with the effort to stay upright. ‘Can you take a passenger?’
‘What? Yes. You?’
He nodded.
‘What do you weigh?’
‘No idea. Used to weigh eleven stone six, but that was a year ago.’ He looked down at his leg. ‘I can cut this off now rather than wait for them to do it in Darwin if that would help.’
She felt sick; tried not to show it. ‘We’ll be right.’ Even if they couldn’t make it back to Fairhills, Swaggie was amphibious. She could land on a river if need be, though the sea would be better, near a nice calm beach. And with no crocodiles or sea snakes. And a chauffeur to meet us with cheese sandwiches and a tea urn, she thought, while I’m putting wishes in.
The man said evenly, ‘I’ll be back if … when they’ve patched up my leg. Or given me another one. In the meantime I can make a map of where the others need to go. Fifteen men with Tommy guns could stop the enemy from crossing this range, if we could get them in here, and if they knew where to go.’
‘Give me a bigger craft and I’ll fly you all. Or bring you one by one.’
For the first time emotion showed, a tiny curl of a smile. ‘I believe you would. But it’s going to be hard enough to convince the brass to give me fifteen men.’
Fifteen men, she thought, to hold an army back. ‘Better not try for the impossible as well: getting them to admit a woman can fly. Hop aboard.’
She turned to Brownie. ‘Good luck.’ She almost said, ‘Send me a message to say how you’re going,’ but of course he couldn’t. She hoped Johnno would at least let her know if he lived or died. She hesitated, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘There. You won’t get that from any other pilot. Good luck, mate.’
‘Good luck getting back. And thank you.’ He gave the thumbs-up sign. He still looked stooped and office pale. But there was a confidence about him now. As she watched, he strode off, towards the trees.
She thought she saw the black-skinned man meet him, but perhaps it had just been the flickering of shadows.
She handed the stranger the helmet. Hoped she could find the way back; looked for the images in her mind and knew she could. Born in mountains, raised in mountains. Mountains were as good as a map to her now, once seen never forgotten, recognised again no matter what angle she approached from.
Kirsty turned to the stranger. ‘I’ll get the crate turned round and we can be off. No, I can manage it alone.’ She was afraid his leg would give way if he tried. ‘Can’t land you on the base, I’m afraid, but there’ll be a jeep waiting for you.’
To take Nancy to hospital, she thought. Pity for the dead woman, the unknown Mrs Overflow, flooded her. A brave woman, with a brave husband. She deserved more than a whisper of regret that she wasn’t Nancy Clancy.
‘We’ll be home by suppertime,’ she said, as she hauled the plane around to face back down the small strip. ‘How does a nice tough steak sound, and a plate of bitter greens?’
‘I’d rather have a beer.’
‘You might have to settle for a pot of stewed tea. Black, no sugar.’
Nancy, she thought. Dear Nancy. Where are you, child?